A Strong Showing for the British Pound

Welcome back to yet another report from the currency markets, where the British pound has been squaring up against many other currencies this week. How well would it perform?

An overview of the currency markets for April 20th – April 24th 2014

Here we go then with another week of currency results. The British pound began trading on 1.5021 against the US dollar, but immediately dropped to 1.4902 by Monday evening. This wasn’t the best start but would things continue in the same vein? It looked to be the case when Tuesday’s closing figure turned out to be 1.4887, but we got a surprise on Wednesday when the British pound perked up enough to close on 1.5069 – better than Monday’s opening rate had been. With two days to go, would it do better still? The answer, despite a drop on Thursday, was yes – and we ended the week on 1.5119 as a result.

Onto the euro now then, where we were hoping for more of the same. The pound opened proceedings on 1.3890 and edged up marginally on Monday, rising to 1.3897 in the process. The next couple of days were pleasing as well, taking the pound to 1.4027 by Wednesday night. And while it dropped back to 1.3947 on Thursday, it wasn’t enough to result in a drop the following day. Instead the pound finished in good order on 1.3968 – higher than it had started the week on.

Onto the Hong Kong dollar now, and here the British pound started off on 11.643. Unfortunately the first two days did not go the way of the pound, as it sank to 11.538 by Tuesday evening. A rise to 11.678 made us more confident of another good result, but we were left with doubts when Thursday night resulted in another drop to 11.643. We were back to where we started, but fortunately a rise to 11.717 on Friday evening gave us the improvement we were hoping for.

Our fourth stop is in New Zealand, where the position against the New Zealand dollar was 1.9481 on Monday morning. The first two days didn’t go our way though, and we ended up on a disappointing 1.9318 by Tuesday night. However things changed remarkably by the time Wednesday night rolled around, because by this time the pound was on 1.9528. If we thought that was rather better, there was still more to come – in the shape of an exchange rate of 1.9981 on Friday evening. This meant we had a five cent increase over five days – not bad at all.

The final question then was whether the pound could do just as well against the Australian dollar too. The opening rate for the pound was 1.9227 here, and we did lose out on Monday by falling to 1.9210 at the close of play. The exchange rates over the next three days were much more encouraging though. Indeed, by Thursday evening we’d improved matters to 1.9437. While we dropped back to 1.9393 on Friday night, it did represent an improvement over the week as a whole.

Notable events in the world of currency

A marginal improvement against the Canadian dollar

This was a small improvement indeed, but the pound still improved from 1.8312 to 1.8323 this week.

A better showing against the Swiss franc

Here too there was good news as the pound rose from 1.4303 to 1.4440 across the week as a whole.

Another improvement against the Icelandic franc

Here we managed to achieve impressive results also as the pound started on 202.675 and rose to 205.554 across the entire week.

The entire week was quite a successful one for the pound, although some results were clearly rather better than others. The question remains whether it will be able to achieve as much next week as well, or whether there will be more disappointing results coming in. We will have all the facts ready for you next week, so make sure you are here for them then.